Teamwork counts: How To Set Up a Hiring Team For Success

Thinking about making some great hires in 2017? Me too.

Of course, as Head of Talent here at SmartRecruiters, I do have an edge – access to next-generation tools to streamline my recruiting and hiring processes. But technology alone won’t help if I’m not following some fundamental best practices for collaborative hiring.

In my last post, “Making The Right Hire: Our Best Practices Should Be Yours,” I discussed a few of the best practices we published in our new whitepaper, “Making the Best Hire.” Here are some more ideas to consider as you ramp up for next year – setting up effective hiring teams.

Acting as a team to make high-quality hires

Hopefully you’ve followed the approach I outlined in my last post, and now have a flow of candidates for the job you’re filling. Each will need to be evaluated on a wide variety of criteria, some based on how a candidate might fit into your culture, and others based on skills and proficiencies.

That takes teamwork. So for each job you’re filling, you’ll need a team to make these evaluations, assess candidates, and collaborate to make a decision. The more collaborative your process, the more successful you’ll be – not only at acquiring great talent, but doing so as quickly and as cost-effectively as possible.

Your hiring team will include:

• Recruiters who work with candidates to make sure they understand your organization and assess their likelihood to fit well within your corporate culture.
• Hiring managers who candidates would work for – to evaluate individuals for their aptitude and proficiency at skills specific to the role.
• Other team members who candidates might work with as colleagues in other departments – for example a sales manager to help assess candidates for a marketing position that works directly with his team.

Each team will be unique for each job to be filled, but consistency is important. For example, one best practice I always follow at SmartRecruiters is to make sure that anyone who interviews candidates be trained in interview skills – and that we use scorecards to standardize assessments. Without standards set in advance, interviews lead to results that can’t easily be interpreted. That cause delays and leaves candidates frustrated.

Not all skills are created equal

Although you’ve determined skills necessary for each position, some skills are more important than others, so you need to weigh each one differently.

For example, you might expect a sales manager to be exceedingly adept at using Salesforce and at collaboration using tools such as Google Docs, Google Calendar, etc.

Which is more essential? Now, it’s not my area of expertise, but someone who knows Salesforce well and has worked only with Microsoft Office would be way more valuable than a candidate who knows how to use Google’s suite of tools, but not nearly as much about the nuances of using Salesforce. Skills that can take years to master should be weighed more heavily than those that can be easily learned in a much shorter time.

As your team interviews candidates, be sure that each team member focuses on specific skills or traits. After all, you don’t want candidates answering the same questions over and over.

Yes, teamwork counts if you want to acquire top talent. You’ll find an outline for success in our new whitepaper, “Making the Best Hire.” Best wishes for a successful 2017!